Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Now that it has been in the news for more than a week, it seems, I'll come out and say it: I just don't like jokes about politician's families. The cruder the joke, the more turned off I am. There are plenty of bloopers and snafus that the actual politicians make about actual policies, and there are too many jokes to be made about ideolouges who display ideological inconsistencies on camera. Please see: the Cramer vs. Stewart tilt on the Daily Show and the SNL portrayals of Palin herself.

You don't need to resort to toilet humor if you have talent. Especially on teenage pregnancy, where a frank discussion is desperately needed. It is one thing to discuss Palin's 'family values' platform in relation to her own experiences as the mother of a pregnant teenager. It is another thing to keep going back and repeatedly calling a woman's daughter a you-know-what on national television. We kicked Imus off the air for the same kind of disparaging comments.

Going after someone's family is, IMHO, lazy writing. Also, nothing does more to turn off people from running for office than this kind of circus. Who wants to drag their families through this sort of thing? Then we wonder why our elected officials can't seem to get their stuff together.

But this is generally the reason I don't watch the late-night talk shows. They play to crude elements and American celebrity worship, and these things do not entertain me. They are like the "shock-jock-outrage" radio of mainstream pop culture = just bland enough to have wider appeal, with crude jokes told around the water cooler rather than the Jiffy Store parking lot. If I want laughs, I'll click over to I Can Has Cheezburger.

And the discussion in the MSNBC post about political strategy affecting the difference between the reactions to this kind of 'humor' during the campaign and the reactions now? I know it has merits, but I hate that kind of discussion when it comes to defending one's family from public insult. It shouldn't matter what political stragety Sarah Palin employs then or now to defend her daughter from public insult: the fact is that she should not have to.